Lower incomes encouraged consumers to trade down to cheaper goods, and the elimination of textile quotas in January 2009 allowed China to increase its slice of that market.
Industrial countries certainly could do more to lower their trade barriers, but they have generally followed the schedule of reforms negotiated in the Uruguay Round (which admittedly phase out most textile quotas only at the end of a ten-year transition period).
But while the world debates over just how much China will impact the world's textile trade when quotas are lifted on Jan. 1, Ross will be focusing on the market within the country's borders.
FORBES: Ross: Billionaire Ventures Into Chinese Textile Market
So the lifting at the beginning of this year of textile-import quotas in Europe and America brought both an opportunity to exceed quota levels and a risk of loss of market share to a newly unfettered competitor.
ECONOMIST: China has won; but so far, South Asia has not lost
In South Africa, under pressure from trade unions, the government last year asked China to voluntarily limit textile exports, resuming quotas that were lifted in 2008.
It shows that America is willing to shield its textile workers from foreign competition even after the mesh of quotas that currently trammel the global textile industry is undone next year.
Under the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, the U.S. protects its textile manufacturers by imposing rigid import quotas on developing countries.
The U.S. restricts textile and sugar imports by issuing quotas.
She rails against trade agreements with China, claims that 42, 000 more textile jobs will be lost unless quotas on Chinese imports are extended and pledges never to sign a trade deal that would cost any South Carolinian jobs.
The end of quotas on U.S. textile imports almost two years ago helped speed that process.
Rising costs and the end of quotas have greatly changed business in the textile industry in the past decade.
FORBES: The Esquel Way: One Company's Approach To Rising Costs In China
As well as an energy source, Chinese companies see Africa as a new market for their low-cost consumer goods (including weapons) and as an opportunity to get around U.S. and European quotas on Chinese textiles by investing in textile factories there.
He does say that the end of quotas would increase China's share of the U.S. textile market (that is of the textiles that the U.S. does not produce for itself) would increase from 11% to 18%.
The textile industry, a tried-and-tested path to development, is also trammelled by restrictive quotas, which rich countries are phasing out rather slowly.
应用推荐